Guest Q&A: Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania

Despite decades of progress, women have yet to achieve equality in nearly every realm - social, economic, educational, political and professional. Last week, the University of Pennsylvania hosted 29 university presidents and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for an event titled, "Empowering Women to Change the World." Penn president Amy Gutmann spoke to Inquirer staff writer Melissa Dribben about the status of women and her hopes for the future.

Question: Over the past year, numerous high-level conferences have been held about empowering women. This week, you hosted the colloquium at Penn, then dashed off to a Wall Street Journal conference on women in the economy. What do you hope such meetings can accomplish?

Amy Gutmann: I think shining a steady spotlight on women's issues is very important. It's the first not the last step in making progress.

At the [Penn] colloquium, we focused on some ways to solve the problem. One is to start teaching leadership skills to young women much earlier in their education. Women are taught to be enablers, but it is also important to teach them to be leaders. How to be assertive in an acceptable way.

Q: How did you learn to do that?

Gutmann: The hard way. I started out thinking my intelligence alone would help me to get ahead but I learned that it ain't necessarily so. Look at how many of us are at the top? Not enough.

Q: While several women now run universities in the region, beyond academia it seems that Philadelphia has few women in leadership. Why do you think that is?

Gutmann: Women have achieved leadership positions in sectors that, when I was a kid, were not thought possible. Philadelphia has women leaders in arts and culture, banking and business, as well as colleges and universities.

It's important to focus not on ways and reasons why women have not yet succeeded, but on the ways and reasons we can.

When I look around university campuses at young women and men, I know we have a bright future. The last three executive editors at the Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn's student newspaper, have been women. Since 1984, half of our Rhodes Scholars have been women.

This generation of women feels more empowered than any previous one, and certainly more than my own - and for good reason. They're taking the initiative to lead in new ways in collaboration with young men. I hope that we can keep as many of them as possible in Philadelphia. More leadership positions will make that possible. Success breeds success.

Q: Drawing on your own experience, what advice do you have for young women with high aspirations as they negotiate the world of work?

Gutmann: That they will do best by not being afraid of being themselves. There is no single "male leadership" and "female leadership" style. Successful, admirable leaders, whether they wear neckties or necklaces, are creative, highly motivated, and hard working people who understand the importance of collaboration and team building.

All evidence shows that diverse leadership teams are more creative and productive. Penn helps to prove this rule. Success in diversifying leadership breeds more success in recruiting the best.

Q: Penn is a large and complex institution, with many constituents - students, professors, hospital staff, alumni, a large real estate footprint, and a need to work with the community. What are the most important skills you bring to your job?

Gutmann: Successfully pinpointing and pursuing our highest strategic priorities: increasing access, integrating knowledge and engaging locally and globally - that's what drives Penn (and me) forward. Plus making sure that our multiple stakeholders are passionately and productively engaged with our highest priorities.

Q: What brings you the greatest satisfaction?

Gutmann: For a start, instituting the best financial aid policy by far in Penn's history: substituting grants for loans in our undergraduate financial aid program, and increasing our financial aid budget by more than 100 percent through the toughest economic times in recent history. Every undergraduate student talented enough to be admitted to Penn, now can afford Penn and graduate loan-free. Plus I get enormous satisfaction out of the path breaking, often lifesaving, discoveries that come from our dedicated and brilliant Penn faculty.

I also get enormous satisfaction out of growing our campus eastward, ensuring that the university continues to engage with the Philadelphia community, and investing millions in the community through construction projects. A once-in-a-lifetime transformative project, which will open this fall, is Penn Park. We are transforming 24 city acres of asphalt bordering our campus on the western edge of the Schuylkill River from Walnut to South Streets into a beautiful urban park. This will add 20 percent green space to Penn's campus and create a beautiful eastern gateway for center city to West Philadelphia, for all to enjoy.

Q: Given the extraordinarly broad range of challenges women face, from helpless girls abused and mutilated in developing nations to accomplished women who cannot break the glass ceiling in the Fortune 500 - how does a university even begin to make a difference?

Gutmann: Part of the challenge of leadership is knowing what you as an individual and an institution have the most power to do. The universities at the colloquium have the power to demonstrate by example that women can be at least as good as men. And we have enormous power through our research to demonstrate what works and what helps women at every level.

We aren't going to make sure that young girls and boys are educated equally, but we can bring the data to bear that show how that can be done.

Q: Your academic and professional life has been dedicated to promoting civil democratic debate and expanding educational opportunities for everyone. Given the current acerbic political climate and the proposed cutbacks in education funding from Headstart to college, do you ever wonder if it's hopeless?

Gutmann: My father escaped Nazi Germany and got his whole family out. My mother survived the Great Depression. It would have been easy for them to say it's hopeless. But it is almost always a profound intelectual mistake and a lack of courage to think that a situation like the one we're in is hopeless.

Hope, however, is not a plan. That's something leaders know front and center. It's too easy for intellectuals to say how bad things are. I'm not in Washington. I can't solve this problem between Democrats and Republicans. But in every challenge I face at Penn and in Phila, I look for ways to make things better. To make lemons into lemonade.

Q: How do you think your daughter's balance of career and family will differ from your own?

Gutmann: Young men and women alike are looking for a better balance than was the case in the baby boom generation. They want more time with family than a lot of high-powered careers have permitted. Family friendly workplaces are going to be more successful in recruiting the very best candidates.

When young women ask me how I managed my family and my career, I tell them, "Don't look at me as the model of a balanced life. I am married to a wonderful man and I am also married to Penn."

I give them two pieces of advice. The first is to find work that you are passionate about, so it's not like going to work - you enjoy it.

The second is to marry well. I don't mean someone who is wealthy, but someone who wants to be married to someone who has a career. More and more men are happy to do that and want to do that.

There has been progress.

There wasn't one woman in the department of political science when I started as an assistant professor. Not one.

Today, half of Ivy League presidents are women, and there is a much higher percentage of women university presidents than ever before. The Fortune 500 have a long way to go. But the ones with more women on their boards do better.

Q: You might not like this question...

Gutmann: Then maybe I should end here.

Q: I think you can handle it. People remark about how perfectly put together you always look in public. You always dress well. Your hair is perfect. You're fit and thin. Do you think that in order to succeed, women are still required to hold themselves to a higher standard in their appearance?

Gutmann: That's easy. Yes.

Q: Is it fair?

Gutmann: No.